Video: Obama promises to do something about climate change

posted at 3:51 pm on January 21, 2013 by Allahpundit

I thought the centerpiece of today’s speech would be amnesty, just because it’s the only liberal wishlist item on which he’s likely to achieve big things in his second term. Push immigration front and center today and then he could point back to it later for “legacy” enhancement, as proof that he kept his key inaugural promise. Instead, this. I guess it makes sense: Today was a day to make liberals feel good and one way to do that reliably is to talk about the fierce of urgency of now soon-ish on climate change. Per the NYT, soon-ish in this case means ignoring the democratic process in Congress and taking executive action, with new EPA regulations to cap emissions by coal-burning plants — and many, many lawsuits — to follow. In fairness to O, that’s smart from a legacy perspective too. There’s nothing committed partisans like more than to see a president on their side strong-arm their agenda into law, whether through or around the legislature, especially on an issue they consider of paramount, nation-threatening importance. This’ll earn him Great Man of History points with the liberal historians who’ll write his hagiographies in the future.

For the less liberal historians, the picture’s likely to look … more nuanced:

[W]hen Obama first took the oath of office, the nation’s total outstanding debt was $10.6 trillion. When he was sworn in Monday, it stood at $16.4 trillion – and the Congressional Budget Office sees additional deficits ranging from $6.9 trillion to $9.2 trillion over the next decade, depending on the baseline used. Obama didn’t come close to meeting his pledge to cut annual deficits in half by the end of his first term and still hasn’t offered a plan to reform the nation’s broken entitlement system. He has talked of making “modest adjustments” to entitlement programs while raising taxes only on the very rich, when any serious budget analysis shows that getting the debt under control will require either massive cuts to entitlement spending, huge tax increases on the middle class, or some combination of both.

This brings us to the two lines in Monday’s speech. He declared that, “We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.” This is Barack Obama, bold leader speaking (with an extra twist of irony given that the signature legislative accomplishment of his first term was supposedly aimed at containing the growth of health care costs). Then, he said, “But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.” Translation: he isn’t going to do anything to seriously reform Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and wants more economic stimulus spending, too. So, within a breath of calling for hard choices, he rejected the need for them. I can think of no more fitting summation of Obama’s presidency.

Me neither. Some presidents fail to achieve “greatness” not necessarily because they don’t have it in them but because they never face the sort of momentous crisis that offers an opportunity to demonstrate it. I recall reading somewhere that Bill Clinton once complained of that. The Cold War was over by the time he was sworn in and the war on terror was still years away (thanks in part to American inaction during Clinton’s presidency), so he’s remembered less for any “great” accomplishment than for momentarily reorienting Democrats away from Great Society statism. The twisted irony of Obama’s presidency, particularly in light of his emulation of Lincoln and Reagan, is that, like them, he does face a momentous crisis that requires leadership commensurate to the moment. He just doesn’t have it in him to lead on it, or maybe he’s too busy with other priorities. An economic rebound in his second term will delay the reckoning with entitlements for a few years longer so his legacy is probably safe in the near term, but if he doesn’t do something wildly unexpected in the next four years to deal seriously with mandatory spending, then his place in history is secure. He’s the guy who expanded health-care entitlements at a moment when Medicare spending was starting to go haywire, the guy who doubled down on the welfare state as the bill was coming due, the guy whose second-term agenda was even more aggressively liberal than his first despite trillions more in debt over four years. You wanted him, America, you got him. Good luck.

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These clowns are so transparently crooked, it’s amazing. What’s amusing in a sickening sort of way is how they’re hailed as Humanist saviors while they’re ripping off every buck they can get their hands on by whatever means they can dream up.

Times like these, I actually feel a little sorry for the deluded Libtards because they’re obviously not really very with it.

Yes he’s gonna cure the planet, work for “equality” for everyone by taking from the producers and giving to the takers, and fulfill the Constitution that all men are created equal to marry any man they want… So inspirational…

Yes, the evils of carbon dioxide, which is the air we exhale. When combined with sunlight and water, it creates photosynthesis, which allows plants to grow. Carbon dioxide, one of the substances which makes life possible on this planet, has been declared a dangerous pollutant by the EPA. And since the left figured out how to measure it, they want to regulate it.

Historians will look back at this time as kind of dark age, when the human race just kind of freaked out and began howling at the moon about things like global warming.

Every time a globalist liberal opens his scientically illiterate yap about global worming (by any silly name) they bring in severe cold.
Drudge is headlining the advent of -50 windchill coming our way.

And after six days of assiduously saving Earth from soaring seas, Bush and the NRA, on Sunday Lord God Obama, instead of resting, called forth His Son the Great Te’o of Our Lady of Immaculate Deception and said “together let Us bring light to a dark, dishonest world. Together We shall prevail.”

Obama and his communists could not get the carbon tax pass when they controlled Congress with super majorities in 2009-2010 and there is no way in hell that they are going to get it now… More red meat rhetoric for his stupid communist base…

Obummer must have been a fan of Nero. I think they have a lot in common and Obummer will do for this country what Nero did for Rome. Of course, it’s all for the children, the poor, the middle class. What a maroon!!

When I woke up today it was a little foggy. Cold, but no snow. As the day went on it got lighter and lighter outside. More and more clouds and temp rose several.. I mean literally… several degrees. I don’t mean just a half degree like Al Gore said would cause oceans to rise.. this was several degrees. And I don’t understand why the earth didn’t shake. But, anyhow, Now.. it’s snowing and the temp fell again. It’s actually colder outside now than it was when I woke up. And it appears to be getting darker again.

Say whatever you want, but the climate around my town has changed over and over today. It changed a lot yesterday too. I’m a believer. Climate change is real. I don’t know how anyone can argue it.
Why our town isn’t filled with scientists in hazard suits or something studying this I just do not understand.

We must give Obama full dictatorial powers to stop all this climate change. I can’t wait to see sunny skies all day every day.

In the eco-fascist scam the tell is nukes. The Luddite left will wring its hands over the Japan nuclear plant which was comissioned in 1967 …. just 22 years after the atomic bomb was exploded.

We hare now nearly 60 years down the road from 1967. Our Lords and Ladies of the press corps spend their days dreaming of a single party state running the country, and writing barry letters every day.

Simply speaking, the country can not handle the truth. We have a scared infantile elite class that will be happy to be walled off from the lumpen proletariat that they hate so much. The elites know they will be taken care of…and that’s all they care about.

President Barack Obama is pledging to respond to what he calls “the threat of climate change.” He says that failing to do so would be a betrayal of the nation’s children, and of future generations. (Jan. 21)

The president is a flim flam man. A snake oil salesman. He’s not going to make good on any of his pledges, they’re all pie in the sky statements given to make a good speech. He could care less about the “nation’s children”…if he did he’d be more worried about removing the mountain of debt he’s buried them under for decades to come. Climate change won’t kill them, they’ll be starved to death under Chines ruled work camps long before the sun burns them up.

Obummer must have been a fan of Nero. I think they have a lot in common and Obummer will do for this country what Nero did for Rome. Of course, it’s all for the children, the poor, the middle class. What a maroon!!

Deano1952 on January 21, 2013 at 5:08 PM

Of the Roman Emperors, I consider Obama to be much more of a modern day Diocletian wanna-be than a Nero.

Firstly, it’s not just anyone, but Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, personality, and potential Tory leader in the UK… Secondly, he’s confident, brazen and unapologetic, saying:

Something is up with our winter weather. By my calculations, this is now the fifth year in a row that we have had an unusual amount of snow; and by unusual I mean snow of a kind that I don’t remember from my childhood…Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age. But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.

This is exactly the kind of “emperor has no clothes” article which will cut through… He is staring straight at the people who say “warming causes cooling” and saying “I don’t think so.”

You are missing the obvious. Obummer is going to do something that will change the climate (it doesn’t matter what), then he will say that in fact it worked because – tada – global warming will is over. In fact it might soon be revealed that certain steps and procedures that Obama insisted on 15 years ago is what is responsible for the temperatures being stable for the last 15 years.

See he can claim credit for saving the planet. They all think the planet needed saving, so he can say he saved the planet and then point to all the evidence that says we are about to go into a cooling period, well because of him. Win win